


Modern Day Revelations

by SStickperson



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bibical Rants, Hypocrisy, M/M, Religion, Shady Alleyways, Smokey Kisses, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SStickperson/pseuds/SStickperson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve was not happy that Tony drug him out to the clubs, but Clint manages to learn something about the Captain he's pretty sure has never been allowed to the public image.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modern Day Revelations

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is my first time posting over here. Wow. This place is new and shiny and a little intimidating. I feel as if I'm a part of an exclusive club. To think I'm used to ff.net.
> 
> For the Avengers' Rare Pair Makeout Fest! The prompt was Steve Rogers/Clint Barton: Faith. I think I misinterpreted the word "faith," but I suppose that's what I get trying to write again after a six-month dry spell.

The press had been shocked when Clint first admitted the Avenger that amazed him most wasn’t Thor, or Tony, or Bruce, but the Captain. They would press, “Why?” and he would respond with the fact that he had discovered that Steve played the violin at night since drawing didn’t help the nightmares or the PTSD. He had also discovered that PTSD wasn’t legally a crippling disease in the Second World War, and that Steve had visited a man that had lost his mind to PTSD--a man that General Patton had kicked out of the medical tents claiming he was fine and needed to get his ass back in the front lines since there was nothing physically wrong with him. He responded that he had been amazed that Steve was so good with kids. He told them that he had discovered Steve had the foulest mouth in the morning when everything went wrong. He told them that he had seen the Captain cry at night--had lent him his shoulder--when things got too bad. He told them about how he had seen a revival as they were walking to somewhere, and the preacher had been stuck in traffic and was late, and Steve led the most fun sermon he had ever heard off the top of his head (he had sat through them for missions before, and they were so boring). It was that incident that spawned Clint curiosity in Steve’s faith, though he never had the courage to sit him down and ask him about it for fear of condemnation.

He never told them the amount of medication the Captain was on for anxiety attacks, PTSD, depression, and sleeping. He never told them about the hilarious stories that Steve would tell them when they gathered at dinner about how he had the biggest weakness for children, about how he had gotten the Commandos captured more than once because of child spies, about how he had passed out a few times because he hadn’t eaten in a few days and had spent his money on delicious fresh food in foreign markets and ended up giving it to orphans. He never told them about how easy it was to drag the Captain along by pretending to feel something--when they were happy, Steve was happy, but when they were sad, their leader seemed to resonated it louder. He even admitted he was too empathetic, but had firmly told them it was a blessing from God. He never told them about how Steve never seemed to eat enough on accident because _Great Depression_ , people, but was getting better.

Regardless, the Captain never ceased to surprised him--like now. They had gone to a club--Tony had insisted it was to cheer them up, but Steve hadn’t seemed to like it the moment they had shown him the tight jeans and the wife-beater he had been forced to wear.

Either way, Clint had kept an eye on him as the night progressed, except for one minute when a slinky brunette had tried to lure him into the bathroom. He politely responded he wasn’t interested, and when she kept trying, he asked how big her dick was, and that effectively sent her on her way. So he looked for the Captain again because, yeah, he was gay, and he knew it, and that man was just so much the epitome of perfection and everything he would love in bed. But Steve wasn’t in the building anymore, and when he found him, well, he had been surprised yet again.

Steve was leaning against the railing in the back alley under the flickering lights with a cigarette in his fingers, watching the smoke that trailed from between his lips curl up into the sky. Clint had been surprised.

“You smoke?” he asked as he slipped from the shadows, and Steve didn’t jump, didn’t even look, just snorted, letting the smoke curl out his nose, and Clint could feel the flush of arousal shoot through him. That was sexier than he expected.

The Captain turning around to rest his arms on the bars and stare out into alley, however, was not.

“Not a lot. I don’t particularly like it, but it’s nice to relieve a little tension every now and then.”

He padded over and leaned against the wall behind the Captain.

“I never would have guessed you’d smoke.”

“It wasn’t deemed bad until after I went down.”

“Huh, I didn’t know that.”

“Not many do.”

“It’ll kill you, you know. Not even supersoldiers can metabolize tar, I think.”

Steve looked over his shoulder with a wry grin. “Everything will kill you if you give it a decade or seven.”

“Touché,” Clint said and then fell silent for a little bit. “Isn’t that against your religion or something?”

“What, smoking?” Steve asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” Clint answered, quirking an eyebrow as Steve turned around and hopped onto the bars to sit facing him.

“Everything is against my religion in excess,” he explained. “Why?”

“Wait, what?”

“Everything is illegal in excess,” Steve repeated, taking another drag and letting the smoke out slowly. “Drinking, sex, smoking, eating. It’s bad in excess.”

There was silence as Steve finished the cigarette, then dropped the butt and got down just long enough to crush it under his sneaker before hopping back on the rail. He met the man’s gaze and stared into those blue eyes.

“So then, if you could have anything in excess, what would it be?” he asked.

Steve looked genuinely surprised at the question, then pulled another cigarette out of the pack he produced from somewhere. He pulled out a lighter and clicked it on, thinking hard for a while as he lit it and took a deep drag.

“Partners. I’d have a lovely little lady and a trustworthy man to stay with me in bed.”

Clint blinked. Surprised again. “You want a three-way relationship?”

Steve smiled softly, taking a drag and holding the smoke a moment before letting it out in rings. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I’d get married to the lady, and we’d have a litter of kids, and the man would love her just as much as I love her. It’d be swell.”

Clint laughed, resting his thumbs in the pocket of his leather pants, and padded over to the bars, feeling Steve’s gaze watching him before he looked at him. Their eyes met, and the corner of Steve’s lips quirked up.

“Isn’t sleeping with men against your religion?”

Steve snorted, taking another, smaller drag and blowing it into Clint’s face, grinning cheekily when the man waved it away, coughing and glaring when he was caught off-guard.

“I told you: everything’s against my religion in excess. If you ask me, the reason why it’s mentioned explicitly in the Old Testament is because back then, the world population was small. Small, and there wasn’t much to lose, so he made it illegal. Now, though, there’s plenty of people, so more of them are coming out as homosexuals. There’s no need for more humans, so God is helping with populations control... kinda.”

“That’s... an interesting view.”

He shrugged. “I figure that God has to be an interesting person with all the people he’s let into Heaven.”

Clint’s lips drew together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve quirked an eyebrow and looked at him. “He’s gotta have a damned good sense of humor. After all, he let Lot into Heaven.”

“Who’s Lot?”

“He lived in a city of corruption and rampant evil, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but in the end, Abraham got his nephew out of there, and his daughters ended up getting him drunk and then slept with him to get pregnant.”

Clint blinked, again, and stared at Steve, who was chuckling as he took another drag. “You’re shitting me.”

Steve shook his head, then let the smoke out. “No. That’s why I don’t get Christians, Catholics, Protestants. They preach love and criticize everything, damn people for everything, but if you ask me, I don’t think they’re in the right at all. The Old Testament is about the murder of God, about the fuck ups of the Jews and the forgiveness God bestows upon them. It’s not little tiny sins--it’s idolatry at its finest, about excess of everything they can do that’s a sin. It’s about mucking up everything from worship to everyday life.”

Clint was watching him closely, and he couldn’t help the smile at how passionate Steve seemed to be, the cigarette forgotten as he waved his hands as he talked.

“The people in the Old Testament--it’s brutal. It’s not the touchy-feely good stuff that people seem to focus on.” He turned to stare at Clint intensely. “All I hear about is the New Testament, about _select_ passages from the Bible. They don’t take the whole thing into consideration. They don’t pause and reflect--this nation doesn’t _think_ for itself anymore! You can’t read just the last one-third of the instruction manual--you can’t interpret just the last chapter of literature! Everything has to be considered. How many people do you think know about the story of Esther, about Mordecai? About Haman? It’s miserable! How many people remember David’s early years being pursued by Saul, David not killing Saul when he was passed out drunk? Remember Naomi! Samuel and the Temple, goes running to the priest, and it’s God calling to him! Do people tell the story about the rest of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, not just the fiery furnace? What about the minor prophet Obadiah? Tell me--do you know who the first high priest of the Israelite nation was? No? It was Aaron, Moses’ brother! How long did his ceremony last? Eight days! How many people know that? Hardly anyone! You can’t teach _just_ the stories you want--you have to teach it all! Those stories aren’t nice. The Bible not about love and kindness.”

Clint couldn’t help but laugh, and Steve stopped abruptly, looking at him, surprised. He shook his head.

“I was going to ask why you believed in God, but I think you’re answering it for me.”

“I believe in God because he’s _real_ ,” Steve said firmly, taking a drag of the cigarette. “I believe that God is real, and it’s through his mercy and grace that I’ll make it into Heaven. It’s by his hands I was in the right place to get the serum, that I lived. It was by his hands that I was given the opportunities I was given. I’ve seen the miracles. I _know_ God is real.”

“And what about Bucky’s death?” Clint said before he realized it.

Steve blinked, and then his face fell, and he went to apologize before--

“Evil is evil, Clint. It’s everywhere, and it will do everything in its power to stop good. I won’t say God should have let him live, no matter how much I miss him, but... I will say he let it happen, and it hurts, still does. But it was a test. A test of loyalty and faith and I had the chance to either let myself fall into a depression or pull out of it--and you know how easy that would have been for me to never recover.”

Clint was silent, watching him as he took another drag. They’re silent for a while, the sounds of the club beating into them despite the closed doors.

“You know, those hookers that Tony hired are the best of their kind.”

Steve snorted, smoke rolling out of nostrils, and Clint couldn’t help but find that hot.

“Did you know that name ‘Hooker’ came from the Civil War with General Joseph Hooker? Whenever he would hire a woman, the others at the camp called her ‘Hooker’s girl,’ which eventually became just ‘Hooker’s’ and then stuck as a synonym for cats.”

Clint was silent for a moment as he watched Steve watch the smoke. “So, you’re not interested.”

“Not at all,” he replied, giving him a cheeky grin that Clint found himself mirroring.

“But aren’t you a virgin? Aren’t you interested--”

“The only one I’d want to lose my virginity to is my partner, in a serious relationship. Marriage if it’s a lady.”

“You’re real about those morals.”

“I’m not letting her raise a child alone if something happens.”

“That’s what condoms and the pill are for.”

Steve raised an eyebrow, giving him a disbelieving look and taking another drag. “I’m sorry: I forgot the part where they have a one-hundred percent effectiveness rating.”

Clint laughed, and Steve smiled at him as he let the smoke out slowly.

“What if it was a man?”

Steve looked at the sky, thinking again. Calm seemed to settle over him despite the club music reverberating through their feet. “Well,” he started, “I suppose as long as it was serious... I suppose it wouldn’t matter.”

Clint studied him, and eventually Steve looked at him. They stared at each other for a little bit before Steve laughed.

“Isn’t this the part where we kiss passionately and wind up in bed somewhere?” his leader asked.

Clint blinked, then found himself laughing. He stepped over as the Captain took another drag to hook a finger in his shirt, tugging him down into a kiss before he could let out the smoke. He pressed his lips against Steve’s and was taken by surprise, again, when he felt Steve’s tongue pressing for entrance. His lips were soft and warm, and he’s pretty sure that it was the best kiss he’d ever had, even as that warm tongue slipped into his mouth and slid along his own. Clint’s hand curled into the beater, carding the other through his hair. He let him keep the kiss going, opening his mouth for him, only to find it filled with smoke, and he pulled back to let the lungful out, watching it mingle with the last of the smoke from Steve’s lungs, then grinned at the man who was grinning right back.

“Well... I don’t know about you, but I think I’m happy with smoky kisses in a back alley. Happier than I’ve been in a long time.”

Steve laughed, dropping the cigarette on the ground, and Clint crushed it this time, his fingers still curled into his shirt.

“Then let me indulge you,” Steve chirped, pulling another cigarette out.

“Where did you get them?”

Steve’s cheeks were dusted a light pink, and he coughed into his hand. Clint raised an eyebrow as he fumbled with the lighter.

“I may or may not have accidentally gotten them when talking to a fan who was intimidated by the fact I didn’t approve of them smoking.”

“You? A hypocrite?”

Steve grinned cheekily. “Hey, he was like me. Said he had been a victim of pneumonia and had a chronic cough.”

Clint looked at him, and Steve avoided his gaze as he lit the cigarette, trying to hide the smile. The archer laughed as Steve took a drag, pulling him by the shirt in for another kiss, enjoying the smoke that filled his mouth and leaked out into the night through the kiss. It made him feel as if he were in a movie. When he pulled back, letting the smoke out in a thin wisp to watch it mingle with Steve’s, he looked at the man, meeting the bright blue eyes that were filled with amusement.

“Well then, I think I’m proud I get to say I’m your boyfriend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
